NFFO Chief Executive's report
Barrie Deas on the challenges ahead

The value that Federation members place on the NFFO yearbook was forcefully brought home a few years ago when a publisher failed to deliver the yearbooks before the Christmas deadline. The number of calls to the NFFO office demanding their whereabouts was instructive.

A moment’s thought about the contents of the yearbook tells you why so many members were concerned to receive their copy. The scope is vast, covering useful contacts inside and outside government, safety rules, fishing vessel details, tide tables along with an extraordinarily useful diary section. It is apparently the only place in which a consolidated set of sea fishery committee byelaws can be found.

Despite the wealth of information it holds, we are always open to suggestions from members as to the content of the Yearbook.

A word of warning: we have reproduced the technical conservation rules as published but even the European Commission has acknowledged that Reg. 850/98 and its subsequent amendments deserves some kind of prize as the most complex, incoherent, in places contradictory piece of regulation on the statute book. One of the many tasks that the Federation has before it, in the coming year, is to prepare for its replacement with a clear, coherent set of conservation rules. Getting things right in a complicated area such as technical conservation rules is very dependent on the information which you as fishermen and vessel operators hold and which is passed through to the NFFO through your PO or port representative.